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How companies can stay competitive in a world of total transparency. With their first book, 1993's The One-to-One Future, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers introduced the idea of managing interactive customer relationships, long before the Web and social networking made it standard business practice. With Extreme Trust, they look to the future once again, predicting that rising levels of transparency will require companies to protect the interests of their customers and employees proactively, even when it sometimes costs money in the short term. The importance of this "trustability" will transform every industry. Retail banks won't be able to rely as much on overdraft charges. Consumers will expect retailers to remind them when they have unused balances on gift cards. Credit card companies will coach customers to avoid excessive borrowing. Cell phone providers will help customers find appropriate calling plans for their usage patterns. Success won't come from top-down rules and processes, but from bottom-up solutions on the part of employees and customers themselves. And the most successful businesses will earn and keep the extreme trust of everyone they interact with

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"'Trust is the new black.' We all rely on those we trust, and that's particularly true when it comes to business. "Extreme Trust "talks about how trust is increas-ingly critical in business, and how trustworthiness, or its absence, has become increasingly visible. It discusses what trustworthy behavior means in business, and how to change corporate culture to make it more genuinely trustable."--Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist.com "This book is a must-read for anyone leading an organization. The future is com-ing and it's coming fast. Peppers and Rogers's insights and advice will lead you through this remarkable time of change. Simply indispensable."--John Costello, chief global marketing and innovation officer, Dunkin' Brands, Inc. "What I loved about this book is that it forces the reader to stop using tradi-tional ways of looking at business value (efficiency, productivity) in order to understand the trust crisis. And the further I got, the more I realized it really is a crisis. Lack of trust in business is almost something we now take for granted, as a normal cost of doing business. It's why the exceptions are so remarkable. "Extreme Trust "has shown us not only why it is so wrong that we take that for granted, but why it is so costly. It's the first book that really lays out a prac-tical model for the evolution of business--big business--and it is brilliant."--Jennifer Evans, CEO of Sequentia "Despite the shifting sands of time, Peppers and Rogers remind us what we never should have forgotten. Extreme trust is the "only "foundation to build on. This is the best book yet from this insightful duo!"--Marilyn Carlson Nelson, chairman of Carlson "Once again, the remarkable team of Peppers and Rogers nails it. Ignore them at your peril."--Seth Godin, author of "Linchpin"

About the Author

Don Peppers and Martha Rogers have published nine books together, their first, The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time (Currency/Doubleday, 1993), has been hailed as "one of the bibles of the new marketing." They are the founders of Peppers & Rogers Group, a global consulting firm with offices on six continents. Their client list has included Bank of America, the US Postal Service, Isbank (Turkey), and HM Revenue & Customs (UK's tax authority). Both were named among Business 2.0 Magazine's 19 "foremost business gurus of our time." peppersandrogersgroup.com

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 years ago, I bought The One to One Future and ended up reading the whole book in my car. I literally could not put it down, it was filled with such a clear vision of how business needed to change. That book changed the path of my career, and life.

This one is even better.

It has observations that stop you dead in your tracks, they are such fundamental truths about the ways that corporate culture must change. For example, authors list six examples of trustworthy companies in the 20th vs. 21st century. Until now, a trustworthy company "manages and coordinates all brand messaging to ensure a compelling and consistent story." But now such a company "recognizes that what people say about the brand is far more important than what the company says."

Absolutely, dead-on right. How many companies understand this? Very few.

Later in the book, the authors tell the tale of a United Airlines captain, John McFadden, who writes personal thank-you notes to high value passengers who fly on his plane. They observe, "In the final analysis, McFadden values empathy and reciprocity above everything else. He refuses to just be an employee. He insists on being a human."

Stopped me in my tracks again. The future of business lies in weaving Captain McFadden's attitude into corporate cultures, and forcing out mindless obsessions with compliance, efficiency and spin.

This book is filled with humanity, but not of the blue-sky dreamer type. Peppers and Rogers argue persuasively that there is no profitable alternative but to operate in a more "trustable" way. Once again, they see the future more clearly than others, and they understand that with everything and everyone and everywhere linked together... there will be nowhere to hide, and no room for deceit.

If the future of commerce forecast by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers in their new book, Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage, turns out to be even partly true... but then, it already is partly true.

In a nutshell, the premise of the book is that while many companies today are trustworthy - they mostly do what they say they will do - they are not trustable unless or until they proactively, and with competence, promote and safeguard their customers' best interests. Thus, trustability - relentlessly scrutinized and monitored via social media and the inevitable transparency enabled by technology and human connectivity - will soon become the new standard by which businesses will succeed or fail.

That's a standard I can live with.

Now, I will admit that while I was delighted to feel so good, so encouraged, as I read the book's opening chapter, those very emotions made me skeptical and suspicious that what I was feeling originated from reading what I wanted to read and not what really describes the world-out-there. But the further I went into the book, the greater, the deeper, the more compelling became the authors' case. I realized that the book isn't a forecast; it's a startling and exhilarating interpretation of what previously appeared to be chaotic socio-economic events and dynamics. Their use of the dramatic, up-to-the-minute anecdotes and examples with which our current marketplace abounds is entertaining and powerfully drives home the reality of the brave new world of commerce that is emerging all around us. The transition - happening now - is not and won't continue to be easy or painless, but we all know that already. What we may not know is how much hope there is.Read more ›

The thesis of the book is simple. In a transparent world, where information about your offering and the way you treat customers is highly visible, your reputation is important in generating both positive and negative word of mouth. And of course, repeat purchase will be determined by how you treat customers.

Peppers and Rogers make an argument that it is in the self interest of firms to behave well. I share this view (Zeitgeist Innovation: Digital Business Transformation in a World of Too Many Ccmpetitors). If products and services can easily be imitated, trust becomes an important area for differentiation. And differentiation does matter, research on successful new products indicates that the strongest predictor of new product success is offering a differentiated high value product; so failing to consider trust, which I would categorize as a customer primacy strategy, i.e. putting the interests of the customer first, misses out on a key attribute for acquiring new customers and retaining existing customers.

This book is fast and enjoyable read. Those who believe in good ethics in business will find that it resonates. Those who are behaving badly will reap their own rewards if they ignore the message.

More About the Author

Don Peppers was the oldest of five children raised in a small town in Missouri, and he's always had eclectic interests. He earned a degree in astronautical engineering at the US Air Force Academy and then received a masters in public affairs from Princeton, with a concentration in foreign policy. But he has never worked a day in either of these fields. After serving in the Air Force his first civilian job was as an economist at an oil company, and then he became director of accounting at a regional airline. At the airline he gravitated into the marketing field, and eventually went to work at a series of advertising agencies, where he gained a reputation as a successful "rainmaker," concentrating on winning new clients. He wrote about some of his successful (and unsuccessful) pitches in his book Life's a Pitch: Then You Buy. His collaboration with Martha Rogers, a former advertising professor, began in 1990, and their first book together, The One to One Future, was published 3 years later. Since then they have co-authored eight more books together, the most recent being Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage.

Don and Martha founded a management consulting firm, Peppers & Rogers Group, which now has consultants and offices on five continents and specializes in helping companies improve their customer-facing processes, from sales and marketing issues to customer service, communications, social media, and employee culture. They like to say their mission is "to make the world safe for customers."